Nonwovens, films, and laminates thereof are widely used in disposable absorbent article manufacturing. For example, many commercially available disposable absorbent articles utilize a nonwoven topsheet and some may use a nonwoven/film laminate backsheet. And, many of these articles comprise printing on the nonwoven and/or film.
Typically, it is desired for operations like printing to occur at the normal operating speed of the manufacturing line. As such, registration marks are often utilized in conjunction with vision systems to trigger certain operations. Typically, printing may be offset to some extent in a machine direction and to some extent in a cross machine direction. In general, any offset would be passed along to the entirety of the print design such that the entire print design would be offset. So as long as the offset in either the machine direction or the cross machine direction was not too great, the print design would appear in tolerance with respect to the article.
However, where printing is desired to be based upon particular features of the article, there is increased complexity. For example, where the printing is desired to coincide with the features, an offset between the printing and the feature could impact functionality and/or falsely highlight features which are not desired. As a specific example, where printing is desired to coincide with apertures in a topsheet of an article, any offset in the machine direction and/or cross machine direction can cause the printing to be offset from the aperture.
Based on the foregoing, there is a need for a process which can effectively deposit compositions based upon particular features on the web or vice versa.